"Concern over the decline in drilling in the U.S. and falling production due to plummeting oil and gas prices throughout 1998 and early 1999 has caused new attention to be focused upon depletion rates. Recent articles have commented on the decrease in U.S. production and the need for increased drilling in order to sustain reserves and productivity. Studies 1,2 have reported decline rates of more than 45 % in the Louisiana Gulf of Mexico and higher rates of decline in Kansas. Indeed, the U.S. maintains a reserve-to-production ratio of only 10.4 years for oil and 9.1 years for natural gas. But those ratios have been sustained for over 30 years through new drilling and reserve growth in existing fields (fig. 1). As a result, an understanding of how that new drilling is performing is important to forecasting the future of Texas gas production."

Gushers in Texas: As oil prospectors, some of them retired whalers, continued to harpoon the Earth, oil was struck in New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and then, Texas. Texas was a gusher, America's first world class find. If Texas had been a sovereign country, its oil riches would have placed it in the world's top ten. The state's original reserves were 6 times greater than those of India, 4 times greater than Brazil, twice as large as Norway. Texas was big, as big as the braggadocio it came to symbolize. As thousands of men made fortunes in the oil patch, a new social class arose: the "oil millionaires." The Hunt brothers, George Bush, and Lyndon Johnson all made money in Lone Star oil. For the last 70 years the state has been America's leading oil producer. But production in Texas peaked in 1972 and has been declining rapidly since. According to the American Petroleum Institute, about 80% of all the oil that will ever be produced in Texas is gone. This is not an anomaly. Thirty-one states produce oil and all are past their peaks. Oklahoma peaked in 1927, Colorado in 1956, Wyoming in 1970, Alaska in 1988.